All right. I've been seeing these skin tone color
filters circulating on TikTok for long enough, time to find out if I'm an autumn or winter. All
right, what you got TikTok? Summer. Yeah. Ah, maybe, maybe. Fall. A little dark, a little too
dark. Spring. Hmm. Not too bad. Winter ooh hoo a little spicy action there. Theorist.
Wait, Theorist? That's not a season. Don't… No, I know I'm a theorist. Don't stop on that
one. I have learned nothing through this. Hello Internet! Welcome to Style Theor
y, the show
that never grew out of its blue eyeshadow phase. Now, I don't know if you've noticed this,
but I've been on a personal style journey over the last few years, all culminating
in this; launching my own style channel. And it has in fact been a journey: starting
with those questionable oversize childhood duds, then to wearing green suits throughout college,
to professional wear as an adult and now finally finding my cool signature YouTubey look, let
me tell you, I have stretched th
e definition of the word style to its limits. Listen,
it's just all trial and error until you finally find out the thing that works for you.
Or is it? There may actually be a way that science can help us out. You see, there have been
filters and analyses made to help you understand your body type. That way you can figure out
clothes that flatter your figure. You can find what haircut fits your face shape best, even
what makeup is going to look the best on you. And lately, the hottest trend h
as been the
TikTok filters teaching you what color season you are. That way, you have an easy
guide to what colors you should be wearing and which ones you should be avoiding at
all costs. Science and technology working together to try and help us solve the fashion
conundrums that have haunted us for decades. But does any of it actually work? Can science
actually help you get dressed and look better doing it? That, my friends, is what we're aiming
to start putting to the test today. This i
s the first of a series of what I've been thinking
of as Style Theory Basics, where we're going to be going over the foundation of fashion and
beauty rules and then putting them through the old theorist ringer to see if they actually work.
Is there some truth to all these old wives tales, or is it just a bunch of beauty bunk? The hope is
that by the end of the series, we have ourselves the perfect guide to getting dressed and looking
nice. And so today we're focusing on the very first step c
olor, specifically the science behind
color matching. Not only has this phenomenon of Wheel of Fortune looking filters been clogging
up my TikTok feed over the past month, but our friend Safiya actually did a video getting
professionally color matched, so this idea has been cemented in my brain and now I need answers.
I never really considered whether or not what I was wearing was the right color for me or not.
I mean, what if my signature red jacket is the wrong shade of red for me and I'v
e been walking
around looking like a straight up clown for years? That would be so embarrassing. And as my wheel
of colored jackets has continued to expand, I need to know which ones are the right ones
for me. So today I want to break down what the science behind color matching actually is
to see if there's any truth to this idea or if we're all just being too distracted by the
pretty spinning colors to see the truth behind the curtain or a truth behind the flags, in this
case, these fancy
fabric swatches that they use during professional color matching sessions.
Yeah, those are called flags, and that's only the start of the rabbit hole we're about to go
down Theorists, from finding your skin tone to understanding how to read the map of your face,
to get to the buried treasure of becoming the style icon of your dreams, I hope that you're
ready to dress with all the colors of the wind. Or maybe not all the colors of the wind.
This episode's all about dialing in the specific co
lors that match your color type. So…
a bit of an overexaggeration. Color matching; the process of finding what color category
goes best with your skin isn't a new thing. Though recently it's come back into fashion,
so to speak, with the rise of filters and ASMR videos. The origins of color matching actually
date all the way back to Sir Isaac Newton and the color wheel who broke down what we could see
into an easy to look at models showcasing the three primary colors: red, yellow and blue. T
he
three secondary colors: green, orange and purple. And then the six leftovers known as the tertiary
colors, which are all made up by mixing primary and secondary colors together. Now, if I draw
a line right down the middle here, you can see that the wheel can be divided into warm tones, the
ones on the left and cool tones, the ones on the right. And over time, the color wheels’ evolved
and expanded to include other planes of color to help illustrate a color saturation and brightness.
The
first recorded instance of this color theory being applied to actual people and what they're
wearing, though, was in Godey's Lady's Book, one of the first women's fashion magazines in
an article from 1855 titled Choice of Colors in Dress; or How a Lady May Become Good Looking.
This article detailed a method for testing colors against your skin tone that's very much like
what you see professional color matching do today. That being said, it also contains
some very strong opinions about color
s, like the fact that the color red is, quote,
rarely suitable in any close neighborhood to a lady's skin. Or that orange is apparently a
no no color for anyone because I quote, it is ugly. Yikes, tell us how you really feel there
Gotey. Then in the 1970s and 1980s, the idea of personal color matching became all the rage with
books like: Color Me a Season, Color Me Beautiful and Color the Essence of You all looking to
capitalize on the new availability of affordable fast printing that made
it easy to get full color
images in the hands of consumers. Human using and technology to validate their own self-worth since
the beginning. Anyway, the majority of these books all employed some variation of the seasonal system
of classifications that we're now seeing trending across TikTok. These sort people into four
categories: winter, spring, summer and autumn. The definition of what fits into each category
kind of changed depending on which version you're using. With many catering spec
ifically to white
skin tones, which is not a good look in my book. So instead we're going to try to focus on a modern
day classification to keep this discussion as open and inclusive as possible. Depending on
which system you're going to be looking at, these typical four seasons then get broken
down into three basic categories to help you sort yourself into the correct season, the
overall skin tone, then contrast, which can also be called value and saturation, a.k.a. chroma.
So now that we'
ve laid ourselves some groundwork, how do we find out where we fit into these
categories? Glad you asked theorists because it's time for the fun part of today's episode. The
testing. First up, we've got ourselves skin tone and notice that I say skin tone and not skin type.
People often get these two things confused. So if you want to find out what skin type you are, I
actually made a short about that not too long ago. Link is probably in the top right of the
screen though. You know, with sh
orts, they're constantly changing stuff all the
time. So I'm assuming I can put it up there, but if not, it's just on the channel page. While
you're over there, you should probably hit the subscribe button. That way you can become
the beauty, god or goddess of your dreams. But with that call up made back to
the matter at hand, skin tone. Now, skin tone actually refers to the two different
tones that make up your skin coloring, your overtone and your undertone. Your overtone
is the dominant
surface tone of your skin, the one you notice when you look in
the mirror, your undertone however, is the color that hides under the surface.
And this is actually the main tone of color that analysts and TikTok filters are looking to
dial in when they're sorting you into seasons to try and help find the best colors to incorporate
into your wardrobe. Now, it's also important to note here that your undertone is not determined by
your overtone; two people with the same overtone can have comple
tely different undertones.
Even if you're siblings that share the same DNA pool, it all depends on
the pigments that are present in your skin. That's right. I said the buzzword
pigment, every makeup reviewer's favorite. Your overall skin tone usually falls
into one of three categories: warm, cold and neutral. Warm means they have more golden
peach and yellow undertones present in your skin. A cold undertone, on the other hand, has
more blue, red and pink. And neutral is, you can probably gu
ess, smack dab in the middle, living its best Hannah Montana life.
*The Best of Both Worlds plays* And while there are certainly a number of things
that can factor into what your skin tone is like genes and sun exposure, you can actually
break it down into three main contributors: melanin, carotene and hemoglobin.
Let's just start with the one that you probably heard about before. Melanin. Melanin
is a pigment produced by cells called melanocytes that are found in the top layer of your skin.
The epidermis, though they can be found in other parts of the body as well. Your body
produces melanin to protect your skin from UV radiation. And this is why if you hang around
basking in the sun for long periods of time, your skin starts to change in tone.
When exposed to the sun for a significant length of time, your skin starts producing more
melanin to help protect you, and if you happen to be someone who burns more easily, then your body
is likely not producing enough melanin to prote
ct the surface layer of your skin. In the human body
we actually have ourselves five different types of melanin, but there are only two that you need to
know for our purposes today. There is eumelanin, which comes in either a brown or black type and
pheomelanin which comes in a range from yellow to red. The amount of these two types of melanin
pigments determine not just your skin tone, but also your eyes and hair color as well. Yep,
it's all connected and it's all unique to you. But what a
bout the two other factors that I
mentioned? While they certainly play smaller roles, carotene and hemoglobin are key ingredients
to making your skin tone unique. You might already be familiar with carotene when it comes to plants.
This is what gives carrots their bright orange color. When we eat more food with carotene, our
body is going to store that in our fat cells where it then gives our skin a more yellowish tone,
though too much can certainly take it further. Ever see that episode of
The Magic School Bus
where Arnold turns orange because he was eating too many orange seaweed snacks? Well, that's
actually a real condition called carotenosis. Where the body's absorbed and stored so
much carotene in your fat cells that it actually tints the skin an unnatural color of
orange. Just, no one tell Gotey about this. I hear they think the color orange is ugly. And
then there's the final factor. Hemoglobin. No, not hobgoblin. I'm talking about the stuff
that's floating around in
your blood. Not the guy that's floating around trying to attack
Spider-Man. Now don't get too excited all you vampire facial aficionados… Don't look that one
up, by the way. Maybe an episode for another day. But how healthy your blood is can radically change
your skin. You see, hemoglobin is a protein that carries the oxygen around in your veins via your
red blood cells. If you're lacking in oxygenated blood, your skin can appear paler, grayer, or even
in extreme cases, bluer. If you have
redder skin, it means that there's more oxygen rich
hemoglobin flowing through the dermis; or middle layer of your skin, thereby making
you look all rosy like a mr. TomatoeS. Now there is a few ways that you can actually test
your skin to find its true tone and no, it's not the TikTok filters. The first is the vain test.
For this you would actually look at the veins on your inner wrist under natural light to see what
color they are. If they're blue, well, you're going to be cool toned. If t
hey look green, then
you're warm toned. If it seems to be a mixture of both or not clearly one or the other, then likely
you're a neutral. That said, this test comes with one big issue, not everyone can see their
veins on their wrists for any number of reasons. Same Safiya, same. So we move on to test number
two, the jewelry test. Where you hold up a piece of silver and a piece of gold jewelry to your skin
to see which is going to be more complimentary. If you look better in the gold, then
you
have yourself a warmer skin tone. Silver, you're getting yourself cooler tones.
And if you look equally gorgeous in both, well then you're a neutral. But
if you don't have either of those handy, here's your final test. The paper
test, you just hold up a piece of white paper to your face. If your skin looks more
yellow, you're warm toned, if it looks pink, you're cool toned. And if it looks
gray or green, then you're neutral. If you've ever had to color balance a camera, it's
basically
a similar process. All we're doing here is just white balancing our face. After trying
out all three tests on myself I found that I am warm toned. So while everyone in the room runs off
and finds themselves pieces of paper and jewelry, just going to stall for time here for a second
by asking you to hit that subscribe button. That way you never miss any of our Style Theory
Basics episodes where we're going to be breaking down the basics to help you on your fashion and
beauty journey. I'm tel
ling you, I've got a lot more of these sorts of episodes planned. It's
one of the reasons I'm really excited about this channel. I'm learning this stuff alongside you
and it's going to be fun for all of us. Anyway, thank you all for subscribing. Let's move on
to the next round of tests. So now if those tests work, you should have yourself an idea
of if you're warm, cool or neutral. But if you were paying attention at the beginning of the
episode, you'll remember that this is actually only t
he first category that we have to sort
ourselves into to find our true colors season. There are two other categories that we still
have to cover, and this is where all those TikTok filters really start to break down.
They're not built to dive deeper than, “Oh, MatPat's pasty and kind of yellow in this lighting
according to the color balance on this phone. So we're just going to classify him as a summer.”
So in terms of science, that's a big point for professionals and a big old zero for the
TikTok filters. Now you're ready for a sorting speed round? Let's go. Category two is
contrast, also referred to as value by color matching professionals. In this category, you're
either light or dark, a.k.a low contrast or high contrast. This is going to determine whether
you look better in lighter colors like pastels or darker colors like deep navy blues and maroon
pastels are lower in color value, so people who are high contrast tend to look washed out.
If you fall somewhere in the middl
e, well, you can likely pull off both. The best test
to figure out this one is by taking a photo of yourself and then running it through a filter
or Photoshop to turn it into grayscale. Just make that thing black and white. This is going
to help you see if your features all blend together or if there are standout features
like your eyes, your eyebrows and your hair. Take a look at this full color version of my photo
versus the grayscale. As you can tell, my eyes, eyebrows and hair all have
high contrast relative
to my skin. This thereby makes me a high contrast person and better suited for darker, higher
contrast clothing. The same rule applies to people with deeper skin tones than me as well,
as explained by TheConceptWardrobe.com, quote, “Similarly, if all your features are very dark
with very little difference in value between your hair, eyes and skin, the contrast between
your features is also deemed high because the dark features contrast with the whites of the
eyes and
the teeth.” On the other end, if all your features hit a similar tone, then you are low
contrast and are better suited for lighter colors. Think Taylor Swift in her lover era. Lastly,
there's the saturation category a.k.a Chroma, where you're either a bright or a muted. Bright
or high chroma colors are more saturated. Muted or low chroma colors are less vibrant and
have a higher value of gray pigment. People who look better in bright colors tend to
look washed out wearing all neutral tones
. It makes their skin appear more sickly
and dull, whereas someone who falls into the muted category can wear neutrals
with no problem. On the other side, muted people tend to be swallowed up by outfits
that are too colorful. So let's just try this one for ourselves. Here's two pictures of me in my
classic red jacket. Now on the right, let's up the saturation to make it brighter on the left, let's
bring it down to a more muted grayer red tones. See how the brighter red actually looks
bette
r on me. That means that I fall into the bright category. Jeez, the Myers-Briggs
personality test has got nothing on color analysis testing. We've literally analyzed
ourselves down to the microscopic level for this thing. I feel so perceived. Now
that we've had ourselves a crash course on the three categories that factor in to color
matching: skin tone, contrast and saturation. It's finally time to put all that information
together to find our color season. If you have a warm skin tone, you
fall into either spring
or autumn to find out which we look at contrast and saturation. Light and bright makes you
a spring, dark and muted means you're an autumn. On the other hand, if you have a
cool tone, you're either summer or winter. Cool tones who are light and muted are
a summer, while those that are dark and bright are winters. And if I did call on you,
don't worry. That's not because you failed the test or did things wrong. It actually means
that you don't perfectly sort into an
y of these categories. You actually fall between seasons.
Depending on which color analysis guide you use there are a few different ways to categorize
people who don't fit into a true season. But the simplest explanation is this: light muted
warm tones are autumn/summers. Dark bright warm tones are spring/autumns. For all the cool
kids out there, light bright cool tones are winter/springs. And dark muted cool tones are
winter/summers. If I'm going through this too quickly, just feel free to
screenshot stuff.
In these cases, one season tends to be the dominant season depending on the person.
And I didn't forget you, my neutral tone theorist. You are lucky enough to look good
in pretty much most colors, which means that you're able to float between seasons more
freely with your contrast and saturation results helping to rule out any outliers. For
me, after running all the tests, it actually turns out that I'm one of these outlier cases.
I am dark, bright and warm, thereby making
me a spring/autumn. And when you actually stop and look
at the stuff that I like to wear, these brightly colored jackets, these high contrast shirts,
all these items that are vibrant and loud, they actually match the exact color palette that
I'm supposed to look best in. Without realizing it I was actually dressing for my true season.
I guess I just kind of lucked my way into it. So now that we found ourselves the perfect
definitive color palette for each skin tone, we can go forth into th
e world knowing the hard
facts about what colors we should be wearing and which ones we should be avoiding at all costs.
But now that we've done all that, I'm not actually satisfied with the answers. There are
so many variables here that this “science” feels incomplete to me. All of this color theory feels
just like that: A Theory. And while I certainly love myself a good theory, you know that I love
myself some sweet, juicy data more. And boy, howdy does this thing feel like it's lacking
i
n the numbers to back any of this up. Forgive me for not inherently trusting a system
that's been around since Gotey was shaming the color orange. So theorists, I'm going to need your
help today to prove or disprove the entire color matching game once and for all using a survey.
That's right, my friends. It's time again where we use our collective hivemind for the greater good.
It's a super simple survey where all you gotta do is go through a list of pictures and choose
either this or that,
which one looks better? So head on down to the description and click
the link to take our color matching survey. I even left that link right there
on the top line for you. Because, you know, I like you so much. I'm only going to be
keeping the survey open for a couple of days, so make sure you do it ASAP if you want to be counted
and then meet me back here in a few weeks to see whether all this color analysis can actually
hold up to the cold, hard judgment of you guys. Actually, don't just
meet me back here in a
few weeks because there's going to be a whole new episode next week and it's going to be a
banger. I promise you that. We are constantly working to make sure that you have awesome
stuff to watch. Educational and fun, welcome to Theorists. But as always, remember, they're all
just theories, STYLE THEORIES! Keep looking sharp. Did you click to go take that survey yet?
Do that now. There is nothing else here and while you're taking it, why not watch
our last survey epi
sode where you helped us to learn whether or not the math of
facial symmetry actually makes you look more attractive. And with all that
being said, I'll see you next week.
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